ENOCH, EDWIN, OSWALD, AND I
by Vyrazhi
Summary: Oneshot. In the PC game AMNESIA: A MACHINE FOR PIGS, what if Oswald Mandus were presented with a choice in the final scene? Would he make a different one, and what would impact his decision? As Mandus' great Machine begs for its life, will our protagonist lose his - and for what purpose? Most definitely rated T.


_**ENOCH, EDWIN, OSWALD, AND I**_

_An AMNESIA: A MACHINE FOR PIGS Fanfic by Vyrazhi, ©2014_

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The italicized dialogue from the beginning of this story until Oswald Mandus is shackled to the Throne is from the game AMNESIA: A MACHINE FOR PIGS. I wrote the rest of the dialogue and the epilogue.)

_**~ December 31, 1899, 11:30 PM ~**_

"_Listen to your heart. You know you are with me. You created me to save the world. I am your friend." _

Even now the Devil, in the form of the great Machine I have created, tells me lies. I will not heed them.

I once read an epic poem in which the core of hell is frozen. It is reserved for traitors: those to their kin, country, guests and benefactors. At the center of this lake of ice rests Satan himself, forever dining.

Those upon whom he gorged were Judas, Cassius and Brutus. One more will he consume: Mandus.

I shall take the place of Christ's betrayer in his central maw, for I have turned against the human race.

All around me is darkness and cold, and porcine odors. Even here, the stench still haunts me.

_Vuu-uum. Vuu-uum. _The hum of the refrigeration tanks, coupled with a heartbeat, fills my numbed ears.

As I raise my lantern, its lens the only thing not encrusted with frost, I see an iron coffin. The man within it, however, is very much alive. Even though he cannot hear, see or speak, with his ears submerged in fluid and his eyes, nose and mouth stuffed with long wires, I know that he must realize what's going on.

His body may be imprisoned, bathed in Compound X and nourished only by the Machine, but his mind is free. It's a fitting punishment for an intruder who asked one too many questions. I'm the one who didn't, on several counts. Had I done so from the start, in the steaming jungles of Mexico, I would have been saved. Instead I am condemned, having built the monstrosity whose heart I have just now begun to breach.

A man, even a wicked one, would shrink from the sight of Professor A. in the grave that sustains him. He would recoil at the sound of that scholarly tone, ever-consistent in its pompousness. A man would weep for my immobile Engineer, the one who gives a voice to gears and metal. I do not, because I'm not a man.

As I look at the Professor, I feel only contempt, mixed with boundless fear.

Why am I here? What have I truly come to do?

Closing my eyes, I back away from the coffin and turn around. A long catwalk of wrought steel, with dim bluish-white lights above it, extends before me. As I follow it, step by painful step, the Machine explains:

"_Mandus, please. I am no more evil than you. We sought the same thing: to save humanity, ridding them of their painful, stupid, pointless lives!" _

And thus we - I - processed them. Beggars, orphans, whores, degenerates: these, and not real pigs, were the raw products of my factory. In my father's time, Mandus Co. was only a local butcher shop in London. He did not want me to wade into the morass of blood and offal on the killing floor, but I resented his well-scrubbed hands. I also resented those who swarmed outside our doors, pleading for scraps. They had children to feed, most of them. After I had built the Machine, these same children and parents fed me.

Their lives may have been pointless and stupid, but mine is not. Priests say that eighteen hundred and ninety-nine years ago, Christ was born to be our Savior. He died to save people from their sins, but I live in order to save people from _themselves. _What a wretched thing existence is, when it's only hand-to-mouth!

I continue along the catwalk. My mind is unsure of what lies ahead, but my heart knows exactly: the final part of the pigline, reserved not for the unwashed masses, or even the wealthy, but for one swine alone. The grinding of the bloodstained conveyor belt grows louder as I approach it. I cannot turn back now.

"_Mandus, stop. Think about what you're doing. For your children, Mandus." _

"_Do not speak of my children, monster." _That voice is my own, not the Machine's, filtered through the captive vocal cords of Professor A. I've finally found the courage to speak, but can I argue against it? Can I claim victory over the very instrument of the world's salvation? Or is it damnation? I can no longer tell.

"_I did not kill your children, Mandus. You sacrificed them on the temple steps, knowing what the coming century would do to them. Your sons will drown, lungs full of mud and shrapnel, on the banks of the Somme. You wanted to save them from the horror to come. That is the vision we shared, everything we have built to avert this coming nightmare. You and I are ONE. We are the same. Our souls are entangled! We deserve to make them free!" _

Free of the twentieth century? Of course, but also free of breathing, pulse, and sensation. Free of life.

That is how Edwin and Enoch were, once I had carried them to the summit of a slumbering Aztec temple.

Remembering this, I stumble down a few steps and kneel on the conveyor belt. It is a fitting posture.

_**~ 11:40 PM ~**_

_Vuu-uum. Vuu-uum. _

I hear the soaring melodies of Debussy, pouring through the loudspeakers along the walls, over the hum of the Machine. _Monsieur Achille-Claude_ kept all of the "acquisitions" calm as they prepared to meet their fate. He, and laudanum-laced feed, kept them from damaging either themselves or the hungry blades.

Something far worse waits for me. When the pigs died, poor and rich alike, they rose on angels' wings to paradise.

That is not where I will go.

As the pigline belt creeps forward, I'm startled by several slats parting to reveal windows. One by one, they open, and I stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from shrieking like a woman. These windows are portals into perdition itself, although I did not consider them so when I last looked through them. Back then they were a safeguard, a reassurance that my great Creation was running at its fullest capacity. I heard nothing through the thick plate-glass that lay behind the slats, but now all I hear are Debussy and ghostly screams.

I try to shut my fleshly eyes against what I'm viewing through these eyes of glass, but I cannot.

In every single window, my two sons stand. Enoch and Edwin are at home in our mansion, in front of two portraits of hogs in suits. They are inside the factory that I built, in front of the three massive pistons that drive the Machine. They're in the laboratories, where Compound X is manufactured - one part vitae, one part Orgone Monad Disperal fluid, and both parts based upon human blood. Hence the tripery, where a veritable lake of it has been collected! I've waded through it, and it has frozen hard upon my coat sleeves.

Enoch and Edwin are even in the Rod Control Room for the ignition engines, and - oh, Lord! - being cooked by gas-fueled flames in the Iron Butler. In the next pane, a man-pig stands between my two sons as the whole of London burns. Where else could I have found so many raw products, and so quickly?

In the final scene, my precious boys are surrounded by electrified coils, unaware of mortal danger.

They are everywhere inside this place, and in every window, they hold out their extracted hearts.

_No, no, no…_

The conveyor ends. Why haven't I been processed yet? Ah: the Machine's ultimate secret is yet to come.

One circular door opens, and then another, bearing the Mandus Co. logo - a pig that looks oddly human.

"_Daddy?" _I hear one of my sons' excited whispers. Is it Enoch, or Edwin? They're twins…so they're one.

My blood turns to solid ice, or seems to, as I view what awaits me. One moment, it appears to be another steel catwalk leading up to a strange throne, and nothing more. In the next moment, I see what it truly is: a series of stone steps, worn by thousands of forgotten years, but with the scent of the jungle still upon them. It is a sacrificial temple of the Aztecs, and as I climb as I did before, the Machine begs for its life:

"_I have stood knee-deep in mud and bone and filled my lungs with mustard gas. I have seen two brothers fall. I have lain with holy wars and copulated with the autumnal fallout. I have dug trenches for the refugees. I have murdered dissidents where the ground never thaws and starved the masses into faith. A child's shadow burnt into the brickwork, a house of skulls in the jungle…the innocent, the innocent, Mandus, trod and bled and gassed and starved and beaten and murdered and enslaved!_

"_THIS is your coming century! They will eat them, Mandus. They will make pigs of you all, and they will bury their snouts into your ribs and they will eat your hearts!" _

Weeping like the sons I've slain, I realize I know precisely who "they" are: those such as I. What possible difference is there between me, who sought to save the world, and those who'll slaughter it in the future?

I collapse on the stones for five whole minutes, dreading what I now perceive at the summit of the temple: two glowing orbs, two hearts. Two halves of my own soul - one supposedly good, and one thoroughly evil. I climb the final ten steps, wiping tears away. My boys' building blocks litter the floor around the Throne.

"_I am begging you. You made me. You are my Creator, my Father. You cannot destroy me!" _

I am a fallen king, surrounded by children's playthings. I am a fallen god, my subjects' bones at my feet.

The Throne secures my wrists, ankles, and neck with iron collars fit for slaves: quite apropos.

As four spider-like arms with lethal prongs snake toward me, the Machine reveals two consoles:

_ABORT_

_RESTART_

_What's this? Even now, with all my transgressions behind me, I still must choose? The blood of hundreds is pouring down from my hands and head, yet my own Creator still sees fit to grant me moral agency? _

No greater torture could there be. If I select the one, I doom myself, and if I select the other…?

_**~ 11:57 PM ~**_

I can still save everyone, and everything. It has cost me all of the travails within the other sections of the Machine to reach this point. The Throne is the fulcrum upon which the lever of the world now balances.

To my left and right, I see Edwin and Enoch, wired into the Machine via the pure hearts I took from them.

_Fear not, my sons. I know now that my Creation has never lied. It's not the devil, but an angel…Verdun? The Somme? My Lai? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? All are coming, and I have but one chance to avert them. _

One more time, I spy the alphabet blocks with which I once encouraged my boys to build towers.

I did the exact same thing when I was a lad…

"_Non!" _my French governess had cried, when I was so frustrated with one of my best constructions that I was about to knock it down. _"Toute ta progression sera perdue!" _

In the midst of my wailing, I begin to laugh. I realize which button I must press, upon which console.

It is not only my own progress as an inventor and butcher that's at stake, but the progress of this Earth.

_**~ Midnight, January 1, 1900 ~ **_

"_ …" _

_Blue water courses through my veins, glowing brighter than the London streetlamps in the darkness. The god I have created with my own two hands, and sabotaged twice over, is struggling back to life. Power, and nothing else save power, is what shall exist when its work is done at last. It's disassembling me, piece by quivering piece. I will no longer be an animal, or even a man, but the savior I have always wished to be. _

_Through farming the world, we will reclaim it, and the abattoirs of war will stand empty. No more pigs. _

_What good are all of our accomplishments, our grandeur and our pride, if they only lead to more death?_

_It is still this current century, despite what some fools say. If I am right, and my soul is strong enough, the next one will never come. By then, the final purpose of the Machine will have been carried out. Humanity will have ascended to the stars, beyond even the reaches of Neptune, discovered fifty-four years ago. _

_In that day, far more glorious than any godly millennium, there shall be no more suffering for mortal kind. According to the pious, God has created eternal hell as well as heaven, but my deity will abolish both. _

_As my governess said, all of my progress will be lost, and that of this world, leaking its own sewage. _

_If there is a 1901 as we count time, at the stroke of midnight, the twentieth century shall be born - and die. _

_**~ FIN 1-6-14 ~**_


End file.
